Marking time in a borrowed shirt before a service I didn’t know I’d attend, I lingered around the entrance to the polling place set up in the Eastminster Presbyterian Church gym, just to see what was up. Not much, really. You’d recognize that poll-workers-discussing-lunch action, too, during any given primary here.

She’d read the paper. And she’d just voted — in a primary, no less. Author Gore Vidal — who had died a week earlier at age 86 — might have smiled.

I agreed with her assessment and thanked her for saying so. She headed for the parking lot. Life moved on.

But not without a bit more pressure as we count down the next three months.

(Page 2 of 3)

You’re reading this, so I take it you’re checking out the paper. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’ll be voting this fall — or at least are likely to vote this fall. No matter what side you’re on, no matter what races you care about, you’ll need to be ready to sort through plenty of noise.

And you’ll need to be ready to make the call for a huge chunk of the voting-age population that will sit it out. In 2008, the last presidential election, 61.6 percent of the voting-eligible population pulled a ballot, according to statistics kept by the United States Elections Project at George Mason University. The kicker is that during the heaviest presidential year balloting since 1968, nearly four of every 10 people didn’t vote.

Heading into the final months of national conventions and all-out sprints — a mad courtship of candidates both familiar and obscure that won’t end until the waning seconds of the first Tuesday in November — it’s easy to get sucked into that weird vortex. You know, the one where Chick-fil-A meals are surrogates for votes — no doubt true for many people who felt they’ve already done their civic duty by either standing in line for an hour to buy a sandwich, smooched a same-sex pal in line or wrote a snarky note of hip indifference on Facebook.

You have to know the Occupy Chick-fil-A culture war moment was just a taste for how this political season is going to go: Give us Mitt Romney’s tax returns; you’re a racist if you criticize President Barack Obama; order’s up on the next swift boat-style ad campaign for our spinning fascination.

Maybe our attention spans won’t allow much more. Maybe the candidates have figured out that symbols mean a ton and policy promises mean little. (Vidal offered this, too: “Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.”) Maybe we’ve just given in to the 20-something phrase that pays: It is what it is.

(Page 3 of 3)

Back in Wichita, plenty of people probably had strong opinions about the social issues and tax-cut philosophies that were driving the Republican infighting being settled at the polls on Tuesday. We saw some crazy ads in Kansas, featuring candidates portrayed as babies along with the usual suspects in grainy, slow-motion shots and tracking behind dour voiceovers.

But for a little more than three-quarters of Kansans that day, the words “life goes on” meant something other than heading to the polls. (Before you scoff, remember that turnout in Tippecanoe County in the May primary was considerably less, at 16 percent.)

For those of us in the sanctuary on Tuesday, across the church campus from where slim walk-up traffic voted in the gym, the phrase was just the numbing reality of trying to figure out the saddest part of that life-and-death equation. For the woman who felt the need to extend her condolences after doing her civic duty, it was probably a trip to Dillon’s supermarket, then off to pick up kids after practice. I couldn’t tell you where the rest of the cars were going on North Webb Road.

Here’s hoping that voter keeps reading the paper. And here’s hoping that, decently informed, she’ll keep voting when the next ballot is available. Calendar says that will be Nov. 6.

And if that’s not enough, here’s another one-liner attributed to Gore Vidal: “Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they’re both just aspirin.”